India’s Largest Refiner Gives US Crude a Pass as BRICS Barrels Beckon

India’s biggest fuel buyer just sent a message with its wallet: Indian Oil Corporation deliberately skipped U.S. crude in its latest tender and shopped elsewhere.

From Houston to Das: IOC’s Tender Tells a Bigger BRICS Story

In a week when it could have tapped West Texas Intermediate, Reuters reported that Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) picked Middle Eastern and West African cargos instead, including Abu Dhabi’s Das and Nigeria’s Agbami and Usan. Last week, by contrast, IOC reportedly bought 5 million barrels of WTI. The pivot is small on paper, loud in signal.

Oil traders will tell you this isn’t personal; it’s arithmetic. Oilprice.com reporter Tsvetana Paraskova detailed on Friday that the arbitrage window into Asia opened, then narrowed. Murban and Dubai got pricier, freight swung, and the spreadsheet ruled. When the sums change, so do allegiances. India buys the barrels that fit the math, not the speeches.

But if we zoom out, the plot thickens. BRICS importers—most notably China and India—have pared back U.S. crude massively this year, nudged by tariffs, sweetened discounts from Russia, and a growing taste for non-dollar deals. What looked like one-off hedging now reads like habit, reinforced by new pipes, new routes, and new norms.

China’s shift is blunt: U.S. crude flows there have dwindled to nearly zero in 2025 after volleyed tariffs torched margins and patience. These days, Beijing can source friendly barrels without the diplomatic aftertaste. Add Russia’s rerouted cargoes and the decision tree gets simple: buy what’s cheap, available, and doesn’t come with a lecture.

India’s version is messier but rhymes. U.S. imports fell sharply in August, while Russian barrels reclaimed a fatter share of the mix. That’s not ideology; it’s opportunity with a calculator. When discounts fatten and paperwork lightens, refinery planners don’t reach for flags. They reach for racks, slates, and margins.

This is where de-dollarization exits the seminar room and enters the loading berth. BRICS forums talk up settlement options, alternative rails, even shared payment pipes. The mechanics are still kludgy, but the direction is obvious: less automatic dollar usage in oil trades, more experimentation around currency choice, fewer reasons to call Houston first.

When Tariffs Backfire: The U.S. Barrel Gets Priced Out

Enter President Trump’s tariff doctrine, pitched as a hammer to protect U.S. industry and dollar primacy. The irony writes itself. By taxing counterparties that buy Russian oil—or that merely irk Washington—the policy amplifies the incentive to route around the dollar and the U.S. barrel. Shippers hate friction. Tariffs are friction with letterhead.

The result isn’t a dramatic embargo; it’s death by a thousand paperwork cuts. A universal tariff here, a retaliatory duty there, and suddenly a cargo’s economics look worse than a refinery turnaround. Buyers diversify, not out of principle, but out of boredom with headache. Call it the quiet acceleration of the non-U.S. option set.

Meanwhile, the petrodollar’s aura still looms, but it no longer seals every deal. If pricing is in dollars yet financing isn’t, or if invoices later net in local units, the psychological moat shrinks. You don’t need a grand BRICS currency to nibble at dollar dominance; you just need enough workarounds to make habits slip.

Back in New Delhi, none of this reads as rebellion. It’s procurement. Ministers talk sovereignty; schedulers talk barrels on water. If the U.S. grades price right, they’ll come roaring back. If they don’t, IOC will keep mixing West African sweets with Middle Eastern sours and call it Tuesday. The market rewards pragmatists, not pen pals.

The broader takeaway is simpler and slightly rude: when politics makes oil expensive—or complicates how it’s bought—buyers find cheaper oil and simpler ways to pay. Tariffs, meet unintended consequences. Arbitrage, meet your new best friends in BRICS.